Reenergizing Climate Alarmists

The ICO is not the only publication that is “all climate change alarmism all the time.” The news media has exploded with extraordinary claims of ‘unprecedented global warming’ asserted in a paper “A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years” by Marcott, Shakun, Clark, and Mix in Science. A NY Times headline reads “Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years,” and proclaims that global warming will “surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age.”

Geologist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University, author of eight books and 150 journal publications, finds that this study cannot support its conclusions: “As shown in more than 3,000 publications, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is widely recognized to have been somewhat warmer than present. In the past 10,000 years, at least six other warm periods of magnitude equal to the MWP occurred; nine other warm periods that were 0.5°C warmer than the MWP occurred; two warm periods that were 1°C warmer than the MWP occurred; and three warm periods that were 1.5°C warmer than the MWP occurred. All of these periods warmer than the MWP clearly contradict the Marcott et al. conclusions.”

Paradoxically, this study finds no warming where there was – the Medieval and Roman warm periods – but finds warming where there wasn’t: the past seventeen years. A detailed analysis of the study discloses its obvious flaws: its primary proxies for temperature, marine organisms, have not been calibrated against atmospheric temperatures including present ones, and have huge error bands (hundreds of years) because of low sample definition. The sample definitions are so poor that they don’t even hint at the Dark Ages Cooling, nor reflect the magnitude of Little Ice Age cooling.

It’s not much, but it did its job: reenergized alarmists.